Technology External HD Question!

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Katatonic

Katatonic

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I'm out of room on my laptop (only 1.5GB left free). The main thing taking up most of my HD is music and games (WoW is huge!). That being said, I'm in the market for an external HD but I don't know if I can do what I'm planning which is:

Transfer my gaming files (WoW etc.) onto the external HD, and then play the game only while hooked up to my external HD. Will this work? From what I've read, as long as I have a fast enough connection between the two (such as Firewire 800 or eSATA 1, both of which are on the some of the HD I'm looking at buying; leaning towards the G-Drive Q right now). Any suggestions would be great, and I'm on a Mac iBook G4 if that helps. It only came with 20GB free, hence the current problem.

*Sorry, this is posted in the Lounge as well, if that's not okay a mod can delete the other one since I'm sure it belongs in this forum anyway, thanks!
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Why not upgrade your internal and buy an external HDD?

Though the installation is pretty involved. Follow online instructions to a T so you don't end up killing your computer. You should definitely practice anti-static procedures. You'll also need specific tools to do it.

As far as what HDD you'll need it depends on the model. Can you tell me which one you have? (Though I think they are all going to be PATA/IDE and not SATA.) I think all the iBooks came with slower 4200RPM drives. You should definitely get a newer 5400RPM drive.
 
eh
if you're running a game off of an external, my guess is that you'd need something like a raptor 10k RPM HD to avoid lag time
 
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By the way... You can't run F800 or eSATA. You have an iBook. I'm pretty sure you only have F400. That is going to be your limiting factor. You are going to want to upgrade to a 5400RPM PATA (IDE) drive with a decent capacity. I think your best bet will be 250 or 160 if you want to save a bit of money.

Then you should get an external HDD if you want to backup your stuff.
 
Yeah I found out my G4 is indeed only FW400 capable. Saddening news indeed. I have no idea how to upgrade any of these things though. It's frustrating enough to just want a new computer haha.
 
Katatonic said:
Yeah I found out my G4 is indeed only FW400 capable. Saddening news indeed. I have no idea how to upgrade any of these things though. It's frustrating enough to just want a new computer haha.
Click to expand...

Come on. You are a pre-med. Have the balls and learn some new things. ;) I do have to say, it was quite the ordeal upgrading my hard drive on my G3 iMac with the CRT having the capacity to kill you. If I can do that you can do it on your iBook. Just look online for video guides, make sure you touch metal before delving into the thing so you don't fry the components, and don't touch anything you aren't supposed to. I believe you can also take it to an Apple authorized repair center or probably even an Apple Store and have them install the new drive and transfer the data for a fee. I highly suggest you buy the hard drive yourself though.

If you let me know which model of iBook you have (go to the System Profiler with About this Mac in the Apple Menu and tell me the model identifier) then I can tell you which drive you can buy.
 
After doing a bit of research and reading through the 14 page iFixit guide, I think I'm going to get the drive myself and just take a day to go through in excruciating detail and replace it myself. I'll probably go with a Western Digital 250GB, 5400RPM, 2.5" ATA, 9.5mm HD. Is this a good choice or is there another company you all would recommend? It's about $95 from where I'm looking. Now the only problem left will be backing my stuff up to be able to put it all back on the new HD.

The other option is to just pay the extra and have someone else do it for me...but that would be much less fun. I know very little about computers so I think it'd be a cool afternoon to delve into my ancient laptop.
 
Katatonic said:
After doing a bit of research and reading through the 14 page iFixit guide, I think I'm going to get the drive myself and just take a day to go through in excruciating detail and replace it myself. I'll probably go with a Western Digital 250GB, 5400RPM, 2.5" ATA, 9.5mm HD. Is this a good choice or is there another company you all would recommend? It's about $95 from where I'm looking. Now the only problem left will be backing my stuff up to be able to put it all back on the new HD.

The other option is to just pay the extra and have someone else do it for me...but that would be much less fun. I know very little about computers so I think it'd be a cool afternoon to delve into my ancient laptop.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't get anything less than 7,200 RPM and 16MB cache if I was you unless battery life is critical. A decent high capacity EIDE/ATA with the specifications I mentioned should be quite easy to find for a good price since demand for 2.5" EIDE/ATA has been dropping off in favor of SATA models.
 
Katatonic said:
After doing a bit of research and reading through the 14 page iFixit guide, I think I'm going to get the drive myself and just take a day to go through in excruciating detail and replace it myself. I'll probably go with a Western Digital 250GB, 5400RPM, 2.5" ATA, 9.5mm HD. Is this a good choice or is there another company you all would recommend? It's about $95 from where I'm looking. Now the only problem left will be backing my stuff up to be able to put it all back on the new HD.

The other option is to just pay the extra and have someone else do it for me...but that would be much less fun. I know very little about computers so I think it'd be a cool afternoon to delve into my ancient laptop.
Click to expand...

Are you running Leopard? If so, Time Machine works beautifully. However, I'm guessing that's unlikely the case.
 
BoxTortoise said:
I wouldn't get anything less than 7,200 RPM and 16MB cache if I was you unless battery life is critical. A decent high capacity EIDE/ATA with the specifications I mentioned should be quite easy to find for a good price since demand for 2.5" EIDE/ATA has been dropping off in favor of SATA models.
Click to expand...

I didn't see any 7200RPM while browsing, but I'll look into it. What would be the advantage of this over the 5400RPM and 8MB? I'm trying to keep the cost of the HD under $100.
 
Katatonic said:
I didn't see any 7200RPM while browsing, but I'll look into it. What would be the advantage of this over the 5400RPM and 8MB? I'm trying to keep the cost of the HD under $100.
Click to expand...
Higher rotational speed and larger cache typically result is better performance. You might be able to get one with those specs under $100 this holiday season.
 
Also, is EIDE/ATA the same as IDE/ATA?
 
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Katatonic said:
Also, is EIDE/ATA the same as IDE/ATA?
Click to expand...
Anything ATA these days is EIDE, but most people just call it IDE because it is the standard, previously one said EIDE to distinguish from older IDE models, but no one makes those older models any longer.
 
BoxTortoise said:
Anything ATA these days is EIDE, but most people just call it IDE because it is the standard, previously one said EIDE to distinguish from older IDE models, but no one makes those older models any longer.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Western Digital doesn't have any 7200RPM hard drives that aren't SATA, what's another good company you would recommend?
 
Actually nevermind, I think I'll go with a 5400RPM to save some of my battery power. Either way though, any reputable companies besides Western Digital will be good to know.
 
I would really recommend a 5400 RPM drive on the iBook. You want to keep things quiet and improve battery life.

Here is a good list of drives on Newegg. Any one of those will be good for you. I'd suggest at least 160GB though. They range in price from $59.99 for 80GB to $79.99 for 250GB. I'm partial to Seagate, but it's up to you. I bought a Hitachi drive for my new MB because there was a rebate going on. Here's another list from OWC of pretty much the same drives. Some prices are higher but some are lower. Newegg has some with free shipping but you will always have shipping at OWC. It's up to you. Happy shopping!
 
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BoxTortoise said:
What one would want really depends on what one is going to use it for.
Click to expand...

It's an iBook G4. Whether he uses a 7200 RPM drive or not he's not going to be able to do much that requires a large amount of CPU like video encoding without making the computer pretty toasty. He's limited by the other hardware. While I agree 7200 RPM will improve what he's used to by a large margin I wouldn't recommend it on an already warm computer.
 
TMP-SMX said:
It's an iBook G4. Whether he uses a 7200 RPM drive or not he's not going to be able to do much that requires a large amount of CPU like video encoding without making the computer pretty toasty. He's limited by the other hardware. While I agree 7200 RPM will improve what he's used to by a large margin I wouldn't recommend it on an already warm computer.
Click to expand...
I wasn't aware that the older iBook's had such a thermal issue.
 
Blue Dog said:
"Tiger" is 10.4. You can click the Apple logo in the menu bar and choose About This Mac to see what OS version you're running.
Click to expand...

Yup, I'm on Tiger. Also, the iBook G4 certainly has a heating problem as far as I can tell, so I'm going with a 5400RPM rather than a 7200RPM. Thanks for all the information everyone, and hopefully I'll have a shiny new (spacious) hard drive by the end of the week!
 
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